Thursday, August 31, 2006

Short people...

It also made that Randy Newman song pop into my head and begin to drive my ass crazy, but that's another post.

Anyhoo....

It seems that parents are spending…

Are you sitting down?

**cough**

Parents are spending $50,000 per inch of growth to “treat” their child’s lack of height through the daily injection of human growth hormone.

Mmmhmmm, for real!

The segment featured a mother who was seriously concerned that her son was short. His doctor told her that he would grow to be about 5 feet and 5 inches tall, which was unacceptable to his mother. She was insulted…horrified even…when his teacher called him petite because "that’s just not something you want to hear associated with your son".

Okay. Someone has issues.

This poor child was teased at school for being short and then came home to have his mother not only validate his fellow classmates critique, but validate it to the sum of $200,000 in human growth hormones!

Mom was blushing with pride when she stated that he grew 4 inches…oh, my…and would now not have the burden of being a ‘short man’.Disclaimer - A bitch is short. I like it, even though reaching the Cream of Wheat at the grocery store is a pain in the ass.

Moving forward...

On its own, the treatment of height…rather, a lack of height…as a medical condition is cause for concern. People are different and that used to be a good thing.

We’re teetering on a ledge here that has been approached by societies before with terrible consequences.

My heart bleeds for this child who has a parent willing to apply long term medical risks to him because her concept of a man involves “someone big and strong”…and for a society so obsessed with altering the individual to conform with an already altered ideal that it would flush medical ethics down the toilet without pause.

So we have teens being given major plastic surgery as graduation presents…faux breasts, multitudes of fat removal procedures and nose/lip/forehead/chin/cheekbone alternations galore.

And now we have children being given human growth hormone to treat being different.

Pretty soon the medical community is going to announce lip enhancement procedures in utero (shudder).

But this bitch can’t help but wonder when, not if, someone is going to sue their mate for false advertising.

What?

Think about it!

Say a couple is man on woman married and/or getting their groove on in the hopes of having a baby…with the assumption being that said infant would be a combination of two individuals DNA and so forth and so on.

If the man was born short but took human growth hormone to get tall...taller than genetics had pre-programmed him to be…this bitch thinks he should disclose that shit before sex so that his wife can decide whether she wants to invest $200,000 of her/their money in her child’s future height treatments or have a child who has the genetic potential of looking more like the milk man than his or her father.

The same applies to all that plastic surgery. Can you imagine how pissed off some vain motherfucker is going to be when he finds out that his darling daughter Mitzi got Mommy’s original nose…or hips…or lips.

Perish the thought!

Or should I say 'schedule that surgery'?

This childhood alteration of humans is begging for regulation and legislation!

At the very least there you be an exploration of warning labels...some sort of 'objects shown in mirror do not appear as they were originally conceived'.

22 comments:

ABB, 100% with you on the bullshit that is MOST cosmetic surgery, and the story you cited is horrible. That mother is FUCKED up and no mistake. The thing that messes with me the most is the surgeries and treatments people do to change the look of their RACE. Orientals getting the eye-wider surgery, that Michael Jackson skin bleaching shit, all of it is TOO SCARY. I decided years ago that there ought to be a law that nobody was allowed to have children with a member of their same race, had to be another race, and that way, in 100 years, racism would be gone and everybody would be gorgeous anyway. Problem solved.

Oooh, Bitch, you have hit on a red-hot-scalding button close to this height-challenged faggot's heart.

I spent many years feeling "less than manly" for lots of reasons, not least among them having always been shorter than the "real" boys and men around me. I'll spare you other issues fun issues regarding growing up gay. Not to mention having a 6'2" authoritarian stepfather. Uh huh.

I'm not sure a 5'1" woman feels this all as acutely as a 5'6" man. I doubt if parents would be forking out $200K for hormones (!!) if they found out little Emily would grow up to be "petite" (but yeah, a lot of them would fork out plenty for her nose job if she didn't live up to the fashion mag standard of beauty).

Like you said, someone's mother has issues if they're subjecting their child to this kind of medical treatment. It is sad what our society has become when these procedures and cosmetic surgery have become commonplace. I am pretty much totally against any kind of surgery unless it affects one's health, or for something serious like a harelip or other major condition. Of course, some might say: "why do you think the social stigma of a harelip is more worthy of surgical correction than being flatchested? Shouldn't we all just love ourselves the way we are?" Well, um... maybe.

I'm surprised you didn't quote this recent article, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14517687/, which is enough to get our blood boiling even more. Talk about bullsh*t science! Puh-leeze!

Anyway, I'm not sure I'm totally and completely in love with all aspects of my short self yet... but at some point, I realized: "hey, there are a LOT of adult men who are short as I am if not shorter." And some of them are even hot. And smart. And worthy of breathing the same oxygen as the people inhaling from the upper regions of the stratosphere. In Spain and Italy, I felt even more "normal."

To be honest, sometimes I'm still shocked by it. I'll see a guy who's 5'4 or 5'5 and I'll think: 'damn, that motherf*cker is even shorter than I am.' And I want to yell out in solidarity: "Right on shorty! Here we are!"

Thanks for allowing this vent, and as always, for all your fabulous bitchitude.

The difference between a cleft lip (which usually comes with a cleft palate attached) and a liposuction is that oftentimes a cleft lip/palate makes both talking and eating difficult for the person in question. Then again, given the culture we live in, I'm a strong proponent of correcting any facial abnormalities someone might have. People are going to find reasons to find a lot of people weird, to pass them over for jobs, or generally pick on them; you don't need to have a bloody neon sign right on your face making you an easy target.

I'm handicapped and part of my condition is eyes that tend to look in two different directions, and I swear I'm counting the financial penalty in tens of thousands of dollars per year of my working life.

I saw a story on this on 60 Minutes a few years back and reacted similarly. I was always one of the shortest guys in my class growing and caught a fair amount of shit for it. Plus, as an adult I've read studies correlating male height with income -- shorter men tend to make slightly less money on average-- and with "likelihood of finding a spouse." The big, strong square-jawed beefcake is definitely the male physical ideal, and like many other physical standards this one is enforced with access to privilege.

That being said, I am not handicapped and would be hard-pressed to describe myself as "oppressed." Occasionally inconvenienced is more like it, and very occasionally at that. If I need to reach something on a high shelf, I stand on a goddamn stepladder. The parents I saw in that story were all like "we just want our son to have the same opportunities as other people" and all I could think was "what about the opportunity to learn to deal with a relatively-easy-to-surmount obstacle or two in life? Or the opportunity to realize that your parents love you no matter how you look?"

For crying out loud people, hasn't anybody seen Gattaca? Do you really want a whole society of made-to-order children?

And also, nowhere have I seen any investigation into other potential side effects of hormone treatments on early development, but it seems to me that shooting a kid up with Human Growth Hormone or what-have-you might have all kinds of other effects beides making them a few inches taller. But I suppose it's worth it to use Junior as a guinea pig if it means he'll look closer to "normal."

It will be interesting to see the day when only those from the lower economic strata are are under 5'10." Talk about a glass ceiling.

You know it seems like straight women are really, really, really hung-up on men’s height. I have been dumbfounded by smart, well-educated women friends who say that they don’t want to date a man shorter than themselves. That’s crazy to me. Don’t date a man because he’s a sleazebag. If he is petit, where is the foul?

I have very mixed feelings about this. I have always been short (and I AM really short, not even 5' tall) and honestly I hate it. As a young child my parents took me to Mayo and they were sane enough to say, look, short parents equals short daughter and I did not take hormones.But I hate that I am fucked up about height and weight issues, and hope to hell I don't pass it on to my petite daughters. But in this society I'm not how they will avoid it.

ABB, you failed. You missed the topic of relationships between men and women. Many, perhaps most, women are quite prejudiced against short men. It is acceptable in many social realms for a woman to declare her bigotry openly. She wants someone who is at least X taller.

Look at the statistics for number of partners, number of children and age at marriage. Before responding, I hope you'll bring to mind anything you might have learned learned about blaming the victims.

Heterosexual women do not face the reverse problem to nearly the same degree, and with homosexuals, the inherent biological gender trends of height are out.

Wake up and catch a whiff of the bullshit. Somebody needs to mention the elephant in the room. I don't condone this mother's behavior, but you need to stop dancing around what's real.

This post boggles my mind. My grandpa stood barely over 5' tall. In his prime, someone over 6' tall was considered absurdly deformed. Now, everyone wants their male children to be over 6'3" and wear size 15 or better shoes! There is a fallacy with the "bigger is better" thinking. And not to intentionally bring the "size matters" philosophy, but there's a huge possibility that they're taking away the size of these boys' manhoods, making them the next generations of the teeny weeny organization. But hey, to a sports buff, it's all about making a basket and not a child. So what are we worried about, right? Right. Sorry; I guess people are apt to forget that the most powerful dynamite comes in a small package....

As a man of 5ft2 inches, yes I can say that I was bullied at school but it just made me a better person as it gave me empathy and social skills and the appreciation of 'the things that matter'.

Yes, I had to fight a little harder to get the women as a teen but it just meant that rather than relying on my physique, I had to develop my personality and social skills to attract the ladies.

A lot of tall, good lookers are arrogant jerks with no social skills whatsoever. Whereas people know i'm genuine.

If I wasn't short, I'd have just been bullied for some other reason. Kids are cruel and will just pick on whatever features are different. If I wasn't short, i'd have been picked on for i dunno...long hair whatever.

Maybe I have worked a bit harder i life because of my height sometimes but it's just made me appreciate what matters in life.

Being short isn't a disability, it's a badge of honour!

The Romans on average were 5ft3 tall and conquered the world. Napoloean conquered Europe !!

These parents desperate to make thier kids taller are teaching the wrong values. And when they've made them taller they'll obsess about the next thing? OH MY GOD...MY KIDS GOT A BIG NOSE!!

Ok..im 17 years old and i stand at 5ft5-5ft6..height never seemed to be a problem until last year when i noticed everybody i grew up with that was near my height stood at least 3 or more inches taller than me and when my friends and i go out they seem to attract more girls than i do even though my friends are older by two-three yrs i know im not growing anymore..my father is 5'10 and i always thought i was going to reach his height but i remembered that my mom is 5'1 which completely took me off balance..not to be conceited but im attractive and my style of dressing is what makes me more noticeable..society has made me believe that being tall is the ideal image and i hate it.everytime i meet a guy/girl i seem to compare myself with their height and im tired of doing that..i never had a problem with being bullied and my social skills and personality is great and when i asked my friends to tell me what i think they tell me the same..NOBODY knows how i feel about this particular subject..and its a everyday problem for me..i just hope eventually i stop feeling like this..

I just wanted to comment on the questions over woman wanting taller men than themselves. Perhaps not in all situations, but many woman are insecure with their own height or size. In this situation, being with a man who is shorter than her can make her feel larger and more conspicuous. I know that is why I always gravitated towards taller men. I am a large woman of 5'9. You may be happy to know that I graduated from this school of thought when I fell in love with my husband of 5'5! Aesthetically, we make an odd couple, but emotionally-it's more than made up for!